Mitt Romney lost. November 6th saw the end of the Romney campaign, and the total collapse of the entire Romneyverse. The multiverse imploded–it was Crisis on Infinite Romneys. Blood ran red in the corridors of Fox News, and the Romney campaign waved its arms, made honking noises, and collapsed with a clang like the giant robot in Iron Giant.
A key problem with the campaign was the plethora of Romneys from other dimensions and alternate timelines that kept interfering with campaign strategy. Exactly how this came to pass is the subject of some speculation. Some physicists believe it dates to Romney’s tenure as governor of Massachusetts, when an accident at MIT opened a quantum fissure between universes. Others believe the rupture was caused by an explosion of an experimental atomic engine at Romney’s father’s car company, American Motors, in the 1960s. The AMC disaster eventually resulted in the catastrophe that was the Pacer. At any rate, it is a problem that has dogged Romney for years.
This problem just accelerated during the final days. One Romney staffer, speaking anonymously, said, “The whole campaign was just a disaster. The problem was just too many Romneys. That crack or vortex or whatever? Toward the end, it started just spitting out Romneys like crazy. I signed on because I liked the governor’s message of a strong America with lower taxes. Romney Prime is what the campaign physicists called him. Our Romney. I liked him. But some of the Romneys from those other dimensions? They didn’t care about those things, like taxes. Romniac, the robot from the 29th century, all he cared about was killing humans and enslaving the bottled city of Romnor. Swing voters, they don’t care about the bottled city of Romnor. They want jobs and fiscal responsibility. And General Ro-Mnee from Earth 9B, undecided voters were perturbed by his battle-armor and unrelenting hostility. All those Romneys, it just muddled the message.”
The week had not started out well. The Romney campaign’s number crunchers were confident, but Romney Prime had a Republican’s traditional distrust of math. His mages and necromancers had urged one more big push, so Romney had ordered a rally in Pennsylvania, where Rinse Pubis, the GOP chairman invoked dark magic not used since the unholy terrors of dread Nixon. Romney hoped this would bestow Nixon-like power, as well as close off this dimension to all those confusing other Romneys. Like much of what Romney orchestrated, it was a fiasco. Eldritch nightmare beings spewed forth in what became known as the Romney Death Rally. Hundreds of undecided voters were consumed, and hundreds of others were driven mad and eventually voted for Virgil Goode. A Romney staffer noted, “the whole Pennsylvania thing was stupid. Pennsylvania was only a swing state on Earth 3A, anyway. Rick Perry may have been dumb, but at least he was uni-dimensionally dumb. Romney had the ability to be dumb in INFINITE ways. It was a nightmare.”
Election day was no better. Campaign computers filled with Earth 2 data were spewing out nonsense. When the networks called Ohio for Obama, it was clear the campaign was lost, but Romney Prime was nowhere to be found. Frantic staffers were unsure how to proceed. General Ro-Mnee from Earth 9B vowed to rain blood and radioactive fire on Cleveland until his demands were met. Super-scientist Jon Huntsman hastily imprisoned him in a quantum nega-flux bubble. Vera Cruz governor Guillermo Romney-Garcia from Earth 2A was willing to give a concession speech, but he only spoke Spanish and none of the Romney senior staff could understand him. The nightmarish sentient lobster from Earth 14F clacked his claws menacingly. Madge Romney, the popular governor of Michigan on Earth2B offered to give the speech, but she was a woman and none of the senior Republicans could hear her when she talked. Someone downloaded the ConcessionPro patch for the campaign’s FrontRunner 3.2 software, and autogenerated a concession speech. Romney Prime’s son, Skagg, tried to get one of the lifelike Robomen to go out and give the speech, but it began shrieking “VICTORY PROTOCOL UPLOAD FAILURE! VICTORY PROTOCOL UPLOAD FAILURE” and caught fire.
Finally, Fixer-Up Depot assistant manager Mitch Romney from Alternate Timeline117 volunteered. “Hell,” he said, cracking open a Pabst Green Ribbon, “I’ll end this thing. The sooner I can get back to my wife Tammy and my boys the better. I’m coaching Mitch Junior’s Pee Wee football team, and we got a big game coming up. And that drywall ain’t gonna sell itself.” While Romney Primes’s sons Skab, Skorn, Klab, and Morn silently wept, Mitch Romney went out and gave a short concession speech. Alone among the infinite Romneys, Mitch would have been an ok president. Mitch Junior’s team will win the regional championship. Tammy Romney’s stuffing recipe will win an award from her dimension’s version of Alton Brown. She and Alton will exchange Christmas cards for years. Mitch will write down his adventures in the Romneyverse and get them published in a small science fiction magazine.
No one at Fixer-Up Depot will know that science fiction writer Mitt Willard and manager Mitch Romney are the same person. Eventually, actor Tim Hanks will buy the movie rights, allowing for a comfortable retirement for Mitch and Tammy.
While all the chaos was sweeping over the campaign headquarters, a befuddled Romney Prime had taken Skorn’s Volvo and driven to the rally site in Pennsylvania. The area was strewn with garbage, overturned cars, and unearthly ichor. Secret Service agents in hazmat suits walked purposely to-and-fro in the sulfurous reek. Romney sat down on a pile of rubble and sulked. Two agents and a man wearing a blazer and sunglasses approached. “Hey, chief, this is a secure area,” the sunglasses man said. “You can’t stay here.” Romney looked up. The man was Joe Biden. “Oh, it’s you,” Biden said. He surreptitiously scanned Romney with a small device in his pocket. Yep, this was Romney Prime all right. “It’s all right, guys, I got this.” The agents dispersed. Biden sat down next to Romney. “What’s up, governor?” Biden asked.
“I feel funny,” Romney said. “My head kind of hurts.”
“Well, sure,” Biden replied. “You’ve been through a lot. You opened a door that shouldn’t be opened. There’s a lot of dark stuff out there. You were possessed by a shadow demon for a while. Honestly, you’re lucky you didn’t end up like Nixon.”
Romney’s memories were hazy. Fire. Tentacles. Shouting. Paul Ryan peeing himself. Did it really even happen?
“Did it really happen?” he asked forlornly.
“What?” Biden replied. “The Death Rally? Oh yeah, champ, it happened. Somebody in your brain trust cracked open the Dark Portal. You were just this close to getting taken over some unspeakable ancient evil. You were kind of incarnated for a while, there. We fixed it, but it was a helluva thing. Helluva thing.”
“No, no” Romney frowned. “The election. Did I really lose?”
Biden shook his head. “Well,” he said. “I’m not going to sugar coat it for you, chief. You lost. Got less votes than McCain. Wasn’t really particularly close. Aw, now, there…hey! You did better than Dukakis! At least there’s that!”
Romney put his hands to his face. “Gah!” he cried. “My face is leaking! My face is leaking!”
Biden sighed. “You’re crying, you poor, dumb, sad bastard. Jesus.” Biden tossed him a handkerchief.
Romney sobbed. “I…I didn’t have a concession speech. Just a victory one. I never even got to read it.” He pulled a soiled, filthy wad of paper from his pocket. “Can I read it now?”
Biden sighed again. “Sure, champ. Go ahead and read it.”
Romney wiped snot on his sleeve. “I just got off the phone with President Obama–wait for booing to stop,” the sad governor read. “He has very graciously conceded. *SNIFF* And now comes the hard work of bringing our country back to…OH, IT’S AWFUL!” He burst into tears. “What’ll I do NOW?” he wailed.
“Uh,” Biden said. “Lots of things. You’re…not excessively elderly. There’s lots of thing you could do.”
Romney brightened. “Maybe I could run the Olympics again!”
Biden shook his head. “You kind of pissed in the Olympic Committee’s cornflakes, there, chief, when you went stumbling across Europe this summer…” Biden stopped, as Romney’s eyes filled with tears. “Sure. The Olympics. Oh, and hey,” he said, changing the subject. “We fixed that dimension vortex problem. You’re the only Mitt Romney now.”
Romney stared at Biden. “The Others are gone? Gone for good?” Romney asked. He shuddered. “The lobster scared me.”
“Well, sure,” Biden said. “Giant sentient lobsters would scare anybody. Say, listen, can you settle something for me? What caused that? The atomic car thing, or the MIT accident?”
Romney blew his nose. “Atomic car.”
“Hot damn,” Biden whooped. “I knew it. That son-of-a-bitch Leon Panetta owes me a dollar.” He gestured at one of the agents, who came over with a FEMA blanket and handed it to Romney. “Take the governor back to Boston,” Biden told him. “And get me that son-of-a-bitch Leon Panetta on the horn.”
Biden rubbed his hands together. “All right boys. I think we’re about done here.”
At long last, we come to the final concession of the campaign season. If you enjoy reveling in GOP candidate humiliation, here are prior posts on Santorum, Gingrich, Perry, Cain, Huntsman, and Tim “Stench” Pawlenty. Thanks for reading my crap during this horrifically long campaign season.
